OCEANSIDE: City selling Laguna Vista Mobile Estates to nonprofit

The lease to a city-owned mobile-home park would be sold to an Orange County nonprofit housing agency for $10.7 million under a pending deal.

Residents of the park, Laguna Vista Mobile Home Estates, are pleased with the agreement because it means their rents won't shoot up, said Frances Thoene, who represents park residents on the Oceanside Mobile Home Park Financing Authority. The authority oversees the park.

"We've very happy with the way this turned out," Thoene said.

The park is being sold to
Millennium Housing
of Irvine pending approval by the Ishi Family Trust, which owns the underlying land on which the park was built.

The city owns the lease to use the property as a mobile-home park through 2052 and it is that lease that is being sold to Millenium, said City Manager Peter Weiss.

The deal is tentatively set to close by Nov. 1, Weiss said.

After paying off bonds the city sold in 1998 to buy the lease, the city should get about $3.7 million from the sale, Weiss said.

"That gets us out of the mobile-home park business," Weiss said.

Typically, most mobile-home residents own their coaches, but rent the space on which they're kept.

Thoene said about 67 percent of Laguna Vista residents are low-income retirees.

Several private companies had expressed an interest in buying Laguna Vista, but Thoene said residents feared that if a private company got the park, it would jack up rents for the park's 272 spaces.

"We wanted a nonprofit, because we didn't know what the others had to offer," Thoene said.

The typical space rent in the park costs $560 and residents agreed to a one-time $25 increase, said Millennium Housing President George Turk.

In exchange for the one-time rent increase, Turk said Millennium agreed that any future rent increases would be governed by the terms of the city's rent-control ordinance, even if the ordinance is ultimately repealed.

"Our goal is to maintain it just how it is," Turk said.

Oceanside's rent-control ordinance limits increases to 75 percent of any rise in the consumer price index, which is a measure of goods and services sold in the region. Park owners can appeal to a city board if they want a higher increase.

The ordinance was the subject of a fierce fight earlier this year when a City Council attempt get rid of it was thwarted by mobile-home park residents.

The council majority of Jerry Kern, Jack Feller and Gary Felien voted in May 2011 to phase out rent control, but rent control supporters collected more than 15,000 signatures on petitions to force the council to overturn their vote and retain rent control or put the matter on the ballot.

The council decided to go to the voters in a June special election, in which 65 percent of those voting opted to keep rent control.

In the deal to buy Laguna Vista, Millennium also has agreed that any profit would be invested back into the park for park improvements or rental assistance for low income residents, Turk said.